Johns Hopkins University

How a large university transformed its equipment management processes with Reftab

About Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University is one of the world’s leading research institutions, spans across multiple campuses and disciplines, encompassing a vast and diverse academic community.

Mastering the Chaos

Between setting up events, managing classroom technology, and overseeing student employees, Erin Heilveil, AV technician, and Ellie Petro, multimedia event technician, have their hands full working at Krieger School of Arts & Sciences at John Hopkins University.

This was made worse because they were relying on ad-hoc processes to manage all of their equipment and assets.

With no visibility into what equipment the department owned or its condition, this led to impulsive purchasing decisions and a tendency to buy the first and cheapest thing that might solve the problem.

Between the lack of processes, overspending on equipment and higher than usual employee turnover in 2020 and 2021 meant that their department’s reputation had suffered due to this lack of organization and reliability in managing and setting up for events.

As Erin said,

“And the department’s reputation suffered a lot for that. So we have been working really, really hard the past couple of years to improve that reputation, improve our customer service and make things more repeatable.”

It became abundantly clear to both Ellie and Erin that they had been operating in an environment with minimal structure or systems for equipment management, leading to inefficiencies, poor departmental reputation, and potentially wasteful spending.

So, they started to make changes, and one of the first steps was looking for software that could help them build a more efficient, organized, and accountable system.

Discovering Reftab

Reftab has enabled them to efficiently manage and track equipment usage, maintenance, and availability, improving the organization and accountability within their department.

In fact, Reftab’s loanees were a pivotal tool for them to manage and track equipment across multiple locations and ensure accountability among their team members and student employees, especially since they are dealing with a large number of events and setups.

Through Reftab’s check-in and check-out system, they now have a streamlined process for tracking and managing inventory across all of their buildings and events. This included the ability to tag items and maintain a count of equipment and accessories, significantly improving their department’s organization and efficiency

This meant they could track and manage equipment by checking it out to specific buildings rather than to individual people for certain cases. This strategy was adopted to manage the equipment across various buildings and classrooms on campus efficiently.

Erin says,

“But what we do is we will check out a piece of equipment to a building and then in the notes on Reftab, we’ll say what classroom it is in, what accessories are with it, if those accessories aren’t necessarily tagged. Because that way it lets us keep track of who checked it out separately, who checked it back in and where it is.”

Plus, it helped them know the physical location of the equipment within large buildings, which was crucial since they support many classrooms and buildings on campus.

Ellie adds,

“And like Erin was saying about the checking it out to a building or a location and then seeing who checked it out and who checked it in, it’s really helpful because we have a lot of student employees that will set up smaller events and do assists in classrooms. So it’s helpful making sure that they’re doing things correctly and using the correct equipment so we can see, ‘Oh, this person hasn’t been scanning things out. Do they not know how to use the program? Do they not do the events? Do they have somebody else do it for them? Do they trade shifts without telling anybody?’ So it’s a way for us to keep tabs and make sure the students are using the equipment properly.”

This led to greater levels of accountability and made it easier to follow up if the equipment was damaged or if there were issues with how it was used or set up.

While Erin and Ellie saw the benefits of using Reftab for inventory management, greater accountability, and specifically the loanee feature, from day one, they initially experienced some pushback in getting buy-in and integrating into existing workflows from other people in their department.

However, it was the integration of single sign-on (SSO) with Johns Hopkins’ system, which made it easier for team members, who were previously reluctant, to start using Reftab in their workflows. This ease of access through SSO was a significant improvement in user adoption.

Building Kits

As Erin and Ellie became more familiar with the functionality in Reftab, they found additional features, like kits, that further streamlined their workflows.

For instance, in the last eight months, Ellie mentioned how they’ve amped up the usage of the kits feature as a way to keep everything contained and reduce the chances of extra equipment being pulled out, damaged, or lost. This feature in Reftab allows them to prepare kits for common event setups, ensuring that the right accessories go with the right assets.

“So instead of pulling each individual item, you’re just like, ‘Oh, let me scan out this kit and it’s a physical kit,” says Ellie. “So I really like that feature, just keeping everything contained so that way less chance of extra equipment being pulled, less chance of things getting lost along the way. And also we know that again, the right accessories are going with the assets.”

This further improved their check-in and check-out processes.

Ellie added,

“I also made little kit content tags, and I just printed out a little sheet that says, oh, mic kit one. And then it has everything listed that is in the kit to make sure that whenever you put things away, everything on the list is back in the kit.”

Reftab as a partner

The switch to Reftab turned out to be a game-changer for Erin and Ellie and made the daily process of managing equipment smoother and more strategic when it comes to deciding what gear to buy next.

What’s more, keeping track of who’s using what and when has never been easier, adding a layer of accountability that was missing before. This change hasn’t just made Erin and Ellie’s jobs easier. It’s also improved their department’s reputation.

Ellie says,

“I wasn’t really expecting to have that kind of an effect because now we can do things faster. We can do things better, and it’s just very clear. It makes us look good to our department.”

And they’re not stopping there. Erin and Ellie are already brainstorming new ways to use Reftab to keep pushing their department forward, like diving into maintenance tracking and branching out into more detailed inventory management across their larger IT department.